page_title: Joseph Grew
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Joseph Grew / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: English: Lilla Cabot Perry, The Trio (Alice, Edith, and, Margaret Perry)
context_page_description: Joseph Clark Grew was an American career diplomat and Foreign Service officer. He is best known as the ambassador to Japan between 1932-1941, and as a high official in the State Department in Washington between 1944-1945, where he opposed hardliners, sought to avoid war, and sought a soft Japanese surrender in 1945 that enabled a peaceful American occupation of Japan after the war.
  After numerous minor diplomatic appointments, Grew was the Ambassador to Denmark and Ambassador to Switzerland. In 1924, Grew became the Under Secretary of State, and in this position he oversaw the establishment of the U.S. Foreign Service. Grew was the Ambassador to Turkey and the Ambassador to Japan 1932-1941, where he opposed American hardliners and recommended negotiation with Tokyo to avoid war. He was the ambassador in Tokyo at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as well and was interned until American and Japanese diplomats were formally exchanged in 1942. On return to Washington he became the number two official in the State Department as Under Secretary, and sometimes served as acting Secretary of State.
context_section_description: Grew married Alice Perry (b. 1884), the daughter of premier American impressionist painter Lilla Cabot Perry (1848–1933), daughter of Dr. Samuel Cabot (of the New England Cabots) and her husband, noted American scholar Thomas Sergeant Perry (1845–1928).  Through her paternal grandfather, she was a great-granddaughter of famed American naval hero Oliver Hazard Perry. Together, Joseph and Alice were the parents of:
  Lilla Cabot Grew (1907–1994), who married Jay Pierrepont Moffat (1896–1943), the American Ambassador to Canada, in 1927.
  He died two days before his 85th birthday on May 25, 1965.
caption: Painting of his wife and her sisters, Lilla Cabot Perry, The Trio (Alice, Edith, and, Margaret Perry) by their mother, Lilla Cabot Perry, ca. 1898–1900
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